66 replies to this topic

[Riffyster]

Additional skill suggestions to a flexible defensive/offensive knight:

2/3/4/5/10% of current HP will be dealt as additional damage in exchange to the same % of HP drained. (For 3 seconds).
For example, 10% of 20k HP = 2k. So that would be additional 2k AP for the next 3 secs but in exchange to 2K of current health.

[KTFlash]

Additional skill suggestions to a flexible defensive/offensive knight:

2/3/4/5/10% of current HP will be dealt as additional damage in exchange to the same % of HP drained. (For 3 seconds).
For example, 10% of 20k HP = 2k. So that would be additional 2k AP for the next 3 secs but in exchange to 2K of current health.

 

I don't see why we should be adding offensive capabilities to the knight.

[Riffyster]

I don't also see why NOT? If its in exchange of his defensive capabiliities. Ever heard of the word "Sacrifice"? You don't want knights to get points in CD? You see it will be a matter of taking risks man, you get AP, you'll get squishy.

Now, back to my first question?

WHY NOT?

[SlowBob]

You don't want knights to get points in CD?

I agree, the rewarding system of CD should be changed, however messing up a whole class instead by moving it's focuse isn't want i would like to see.

[Riffyster]

Hi Bob

Yeah I get you man, it was just an option/suggestion though As with regard on the CD points, knights should be rewarded for damage recieved. My thoughts

Good morning NY!

[jerremy]

I agreed pretty much with what you said. Just pointing out the sword side. Would you agree with me with the single target orientation of the corssbow user, but more offensive than the more defensive, aoe defuffer knight?

Apologies for my late response. Yes I do agree that the crossbow should be more single target oriented. Then about the more offensive part, yes it does make sense, but I think it shouldn't be a big difference. Perhaps some higher values on the crossbow skills, and some additional defence on the one handed passives would do the trick.

Edited by jerremy, 13 July 2013 - 05:34 AM.

[SlowBob]

Hi Bob

Yeah I get you man, it was just an option/suggestion though As with regard on the CD points, knights should be rewarded for damage recieved. My thoughts

Good morning NY!

 

Hey there

Well the idea wasn't that bad, however it wouldn't fit to the class. CD definitly needs a change however i think balancing is more important atm

 

Good evening Austria!

[KTFlash]

Hi Bob

Yeah I get you man, it was just an option/suggestion though As with regard on the CD points, knights should be rewarded for damage recieved. My thoughts

Good morning NY!

 

That's also wrong, cause most of the time the characters that get more damage received are mages and clerics. 99% of the time I played Knight it CD I was last in damage received.

 

In my opinion, he should be awarded for damage mitigated, debuffs applied (in seconds), taunts applied, etc. Something that he should be doing. But no damage. The concept of the class(and its development) shouldn't be changed cause of a pvp instance that rewards damage dealers instead of teamwork.

[Leonis]

Hey guys, I read everything totally get where you're coming from and I'm looking in to it all.

 

Aside from the refine reduction, you actually have larger defensive passives than before and looking at how the defense scales in damage reduction, it is still correctly making its mark. So, it stands to reason there may be something else that could be done on top of it all and I'm looking in to that now.  Even so, we're looking in to the formulas behind why it seems like damage is so much more than we anticipated. So far, there's one potential reason we're looking at and we're going to be addressing it soon.

 

Based on your discussions, I will be working on what seems to be agreed on as a design difference, where Crossbow is a bit more single target based while swords will be more group based.

 

Critical Shot will be given its enhancement, of being a forced crit on a hit target. I will either add taunt to Magic Arrow or replace it entirely with the old taunt shot. The burns and poisons will be reviewed for balance, since those mechanic changes aren't going to be possible.

 

I also noticed, I missed some tree path updates to the visuals for the skill tree.

 

I'm also looking to bump up the shield defense rates and block rates, so that you block a little more often and when you do you reduce further damage from the attack. This should re-establish a noticable amount of survivability from Knights.

 

That being said, I just wanted to respond a bit to some of the really cool ideas you guys had.

 

jerremy,
Not to say your ideas aren't great, but I'm at the mercy of what the game mechahincs support.

And if we were to go and work on trying to add some of these effects, we'd be looking at another year.

Stalwart Juggernaut - This was tried before, where you'd have a buff that would grant a great amount of something for sacrificing an aspect of something. It was largely hated and players complained continously to remove the 'debuff' side of it and just give the buff.
Hell Hath no greater fury - You basically just described Berserk in its infancy. Again, players hated the drawback to using it no matter how great the benefit was offensively. Aside from that, we're currently limited to a single skill only granting up to 3 status effects. To expand on it would take additional development time.
More versitle diables - Pulls, leaps, knockbacks, aren't supported in our world mechanics. To implement them would be an overhaul to the game mechanics unfortunately. Not that we wouldn't want to have them, the work is just too great for our current work force and timeline.
Something else - conditional skills are limited to static variables right now, so level, hp, mp, wearing a weapon, having learned a skill. Implementing something as complicated as only available after a certain skill is cast, certainly would be pretty sweet, but not a mechanic we have available or the time to work on at this stage of testing.

Like I said, you have some wonderful ideas, many we've tried doing before but got lashed by the community for and have since stayed away from certain 'designs' no matter how much we may think it is justified.
We had an entire proc system in design, before we realized it wasn't possible to get done in scope of timeline and project manpower.

So, based on what you do know we have available and are capable of doing, do you have any ideas or suggestions that we could try to work on in regards to addressing the issues you've stated?

It would help me out a lot more if you were specific with what or where you feel things are lacking, how and why. Along with the suggestions you may have to improving it as well.

In regards to not feeling tanky enough, I'm looking at the defense formula because I noticed I was getting hit rather hard for what I was expecting to see. I'm concerned the defense curve is not quite as good when it comes to PvP than for PvM. So it is being investigated.

KTFlash,
Taunt is a generic skill for the soldier tree. It was always available no matter what you chose and I don't see a reason not to let it be an option. Sure, a Champ may not have as much a need for it, but if you have at least a little mind to want to be able to save a player from being smushyfaced, it's nice to have as an option.

 

[jerremy]

Well, I was quite aware most of my suggestions weren't possible (yet), I merely gave them cause I thought you might be able to work on them in the long run. If it's not possible at all, then pay no mind to the things I said.

That aside, I think most of what you said is reasonable.

-I really hope you find the cause for the increase in damage, cause right now it's quite a pain.

-Getting a taunt shot effect back on one of the crossbow skills would be quite appreciated.

-The shield idea is awesome, I'd really love that one. The amount of blocks and the effectiveness of said blocks have always felt sort of low, this would really help out a lot. (How about a shield buff like shield reflect and guard that increases block rate for a small amount of time?)

 

Now to add some things myself. I'm mainly going to talk about the crossbow path right now, cause that's the one I've been testing so far. 

 

The slow on trap arrow (and most skills in general) is so low you can't call it a disable. The base slow of 5% hardly makes a difference, so I figured I'd get some charm to improve the static amount. I was quite dissappointed at just how much it actually affects it. With an increase of about 60 charm (not all that much, but it's not like you'd sacrifice all your other stats to get a lot of charm), the static slow on trap arrow improved from 58 to an incredibly high 72. Or said otherwise, for about every four points in charm your slow improves by one point. I also noticed that the slow gets affected by your strength, but this one was even worse. For every ten points in strength, the slow improves by one point. Seriously? I understand that you want to make charm matter, but right now I don't really notice that. I did notice that the stats seem to matter a bit more on shield throw. When maxed, it would slow for 10%+150, twice the slow amount of trap arrow. That's already a more useful slow (though not really strong enough to say it's all that better), but as a ranged class, should I be forced to put 25 skill points into a tree of melee skills. I think the shield tree is a nice addition to the melee path (aside from the fact that you either have to forsake your passives or the melee path itself if you want it, making it more useful to get the melee path and the passives), but it shouldn't be a necessity for the ranged path to get all these skills.

So either, you should improve the base values (but since you want to make charm matter, this isn't a very plausible option), or make charm more effective when it comes down to debuffs.

Right now, if I wanted a static amount of 250 based only on my charm, I would need 1k charm, which isn't even possible. And face it, 250 already does something but it's not even that devastating compared to the loss of stats you have to sacrifice to get such an amount.

 

The crossbow path still feels incredibly linear to me. At lvl 230, I'll be able to get:

-All defensive passives aside from strength straining.

-All weapon masteries.

-Taunt, sacrifice and battle alertness. (Note that these three are all lvl1)

-Shield jab and stun (the only two shield skills that really matter btw, the stun being the greatest disable there is right now. I did say I shouldn't be getting melee skills as a ranged class, but the stun effect is so great that you should still get it.)

-Guard and reflect

-Six out of eight crossbow skills

 

While it is certainly true that I didn't get all skills, most other skills weren't significant at all. Self buffs that aren't a necessity when you have a cleric, shield skills which I again shouldn't be getting as crossbow user, AOE debuffs that don't debuff all that much to sacrifice your other skills for (furthermore, I think we agreed crossbow users would be more single-target oriented), and two crossbow skills that you wouldn't have used if you had them anyway. Oh, and I can't give damage reduction to one ally.

 

 

Edited by jerremy, 17 July 2013 - 11:39 AM.

[Leonis]

Remember, the 5% isn't the only factor in the skills' effect. There is a static number that you can increase, either by increasing your main stat (DEX as a Hawker) or Charm. However, seeing as the Crossbow tree for Hawkers is set to 10%, I've set the Trap Arrow to 10% as well. I also boosted the base movement speed value as well by a small bit.

 

How it works, is 1 Charm = 1% increase to base effect. So, 1% of 25 is 0.25. Every 100 charm, you are doubling the static value effect.

For every 3 [Primary Stat] = 1% (roughly) Which is how it's been for INT currently on the live server now.

 

I wanted to make a skill that temp boosted block rate, but its one of the stats that isn't setup to do it as a buff yet.

 

jerremy, you don't need to get upset, you're doing a fine job explaining things and your suggestions are being taken in to consideration. I do, after all, want each tree and build to be viable as well as desired. I just have to keep a steady eye on making sure things stay within a balance and not giving power, to give power.

 

[jerremy]

Apologies if I sounded upset, I tend to have a pretty sharp tongue.

Edited by jerremy, 17 July 2013 - 01:32 PM.

[Leonis]

Not at all, I just didn't want you making yourself unhappy that you were sharing so much and feel like it was being ignored or refused. Part of what I'm doing is also trying to help keep open minds to the update, because I've expanded a bit on how game play is being affected. Many times when I get unhappy remarks, other factors get overlooked. And they're usually simple things, like cooldown duration or if one skill has an AoE effect to it or not. The focus can trend towards what is important to them.

 

I was just trying to make sure you don't feel like you're heading towards getting upset.

[KTFlash]

Ok, so, correct if Im wrong here.

 

Taunt (or aoe taunt pvp) draws the attention to the taunter but has no duration, so the enemy taunted (the taunters target) can retarget as fast as his hands can and continue attacking another target, or running, or whatever. That's how it should work?

[Leonis]

That is how it currently works, yes. However that is not the full intention of what we want as a mechanic. It is our intention and desire that with the taunt effect, the duration would be how long the target change would remain 'locked on' before they would be able to retarget. They would still be able to run, but their targeting (focus) would remain on the 'taunter.'

 

The mechanics to force the target switch and lock is what's proving difficult.

[GreylaVu]

the Reflect skill is perfect now. makes a knight worth playing.

[Leonis]

the Reflect skill is perfect now. makes a knight worth playing.

 

There was a small oversight with the cooldown of the skill, where it was not intended to be possible to cast continuously. It will be getting a 20 second cooldown between effect durations. In the future, we can look at putting in new unique skills to augment the effect further, by duration or cooldown, but we'll see what happens as time continues on.